On May 18, HR 5388 passed the US House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform, by a vote of 29-4. It is now pending in the House Judiciary Committee. HR 5388 gives the District of Columbia a voting member in the U.S. House, and also gives Utah another seat. The bill has 40 co-sponsors.
On June 1, the 2nd circuit directed a lower US District Court in New York state to decide whether New York violates the 14th amendment by disenfranchising prisoners, and simultaneously counting prisoners as residents of prison communities, instead of counting them as residents of their home before they were imprisoned. Hayden v Pataki, 04-3886.
The great bulk of felons in New York state are imprisoned in rural communities in upstate New York, yet a majority of felons consider their home to be in New York city and other urban areas of New York state. For purposes of drawing congressional and legislative districts, this practice results in giving extra voting power to rural upstate areas, relative to large cities. The 2nd circuit wants the lower court to consider whether the state’s redistricting logic is faulty.
On May 28, a group called Unity08 announced plans to choose an independent presidential candidate over the internet, and petition to get him or her on the November 2008 ballots. On May 31 the group was featured in the Washington Post and on the PBS News show Lehrer News Hour. The publicity was due to the fact that Unity08 is being organized by experienced and well-known Democratic and Republican political organizers. The spokesmen on the Lehrer News Hour were Doug Bailey and Hamilton Jordan. They believe that the Democratic and Republican presidential selection process (depending on Iowa caucus attendees and New Hampshire voters) is too exclusionary. They also believe that the two major parties cannot tackle the pressing issues of the day, because the base of each of these parties is fixated on issues that are not as pressing. Finally, they believe that the two major parties are so hostile to each other, and so dedicated to winning at any price, that public discourse and government policy suffer.
For more information, see www.unity08.com.
On May 30, the Arkansas Green Party submitted 18,000 signatures to the Secretary of State’s office, to qualify for party status. The statutory law requires slightly over 24,000 signatures. However, that law was declared unconstitutional in 1996. Arkansas appealed the 1996 ruling, but then dropped its own appeal, and now tries to pretend that the 1996 ruling doesn’t exist. The Associated Press reporter who covered this story doesn’t seem to know about the 1996 ruling, which is called Citizens to Establish a Reform Party v Priest, 970 F Supp 690. That decision said it is unconstitutional for Arkansas to require more than 10,000 signatures for a new party, since Arkansas requires that many signatures for statewide non-presidential independent candidates.
The Virginia Green Party has qualified its candidate for U.S. Senate. This is the first time the Green Party has completed a petition drive as difficult as 10,000 signatures anywhere in the South, except for the 2000 Green petitions in connection with the Nader campaign in Texas and Virginia in 2000. The Virginia Green Party calls itself the Independent Green Party.
